Theology journal decides not to publish study on ‘Gospel of Jesus’Wife’

Harvard’s theology journal has decided not to publish a paper on a disputed “The Gospel of Jesus’ Wife” by a Harvard historian, according to news reports.

 The Harvard Theological Review recently announced that it will withdraw the paper by Professor Karen King on the supposed lost gospel - in which Jesus mentions his wife - in its January 2013 issue.

 It added however, the study may be published after it has been confirmed to be genuine.

 “The owner of the papyrus fragment has been making arrangements for the next round of analysis of the fragment, including testing by independent laboratories with the resources and the specific expertise necessary to produce and interpret reliable results,” Kit Dodgson, director of communications at Harvard Divinity School said. “This next phase is likely to take several weeks, if not months.”

 Hershel Shanks of the Biblical Archaeology Society publicly bashed the withdrawal, calling it “shameful.”

 “When a professor at the Harvard Divinity School, backed up by two experts from Princeton and NYU who declare the text to be authentic, presents the case - and tentatively at that - that should be enough for HTR to publish King’s article, not to cowardly suspend its decision to publish,” Shanks said.

 He said as a result of HTR’s decision, there will now be a dispute over its authenticity.

 “The Gospel of Jesus’ Wife” - which King argues is from the fourth century - is written in Coptic, the language of Early Christians in Egypt. It is believed to be the first ancient evidence of Jesus speaking of a wife.

 King, with two Coptic scholars - Anne Marie Luijendijk of Princeton University and Roger Bagnall of New York University - translated eight lines of the business card-sized papyrus which are cut off at both ends. They managed to garner few phrases including “deny, Mary is worth of it,” “Jesus said to them, ‘My wife’,” “As for me, I dwell with her in order to.”

 When King announced the discovery last month, some scholars voiced their concerns that the papyrus may have been be forged.

 Andrew Bernhard, who wrote “Other Early Christian Gospels,” pointed out that grammatical errors and line breaks found in the “gospel” was similar to the errors found only in Michael Grodin’s “Interlinear Coptic-English Translations of the Gospel of Thomas.” Bernhard claimed that “The Gospel of Jesus’ Wife” seems to be made by an amateur who took words and phrases from Grodin’s work.

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